If peculiar objects popping up around the country wasn’t enough, on Wednesday astronomers successfully identified a mysterious space object that’s temporarily in Earth’s orbit.
What was once thought to be an asteroid is actually a 54-year old rocket, NASA confirmed on Thursday.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, recent observations from a telescope in Hawaii successfully revealed the object’s identity, Phys.org reports.
After its discovery in September, the mysterious object, officially named 2020 SO, was classified as an asteroid— but Paul Chodas, NASA’s top asteroid expert, had doubts.
According to Phys.org, the astronomer quickly suspected the object to be a Centaur rocket from the Surveyor 2, a failed unmanned moon-landing mission from 1966. Size estimates put 2020 SO in the range of a Centaur rocket, which is approximately 32 feet long and 10 feet in diameter.
After a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe the mystery object, Chodas’ suspicions were proven right.
In addition to observing 2020 SO, Reddy’s team also tracked a Centaur rocket from 1971 that is in Earth’s orbit to compare data; the team found a match.
“We knew that if we wanted to compare apples to apples, we’d need to try to get spectral data from another Centaur rocket booster that had been in Earth orbit for many years to then see if it better matched 2020 SO’s spectrum,” Reddy said in a NASA statement, “(Our) conclusion was the result of a tremendous team effort.”
According to the Associated Press, the Centaur booster entered a lopsided orbit around Earth in November and made its closest approach to the planet on Tuesday, at just over 31,000 miles. The rocket will exit Earth’s orbit in March and shoot back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next visit to our home planet will take place in 2036.